This is Washington Edition, the newsletter about money, power and politics in the nation’s capital. Today, senior correspondent Saleha Mohsin looks at the slowed down process for picking a Treasury secretary. Sign up here and follow us at @bpolitics. Email our editors here.

Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary merry-go-round is taking another spin.

The president-elect moved quickly on other key cabinet posts, making a few out-of-the-box choices like Matt Gaetz as attorney general along the way. But his decision on who will hold perhaps the most important job in global economics and finance has slowed to a crawl. Leading candidates rose and fell as some of Trump’s inner circle, like billionaire Elon Musk, lobbied for their favorites.

Musk’s candidate, Cantor Fitzgerald’s Howard Lutnick, was eliminated from the Treasury sweepstakes today with Trump picking him for Commerce secretary.

Howard Lutnick Photographer: Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg

That’s the first pick for his economic team that Trump has announced, and it came with a twist: Trump says that Lutnick will lead his tariff and trade agenda, giving him responsibility over the US Trade Representative’s office. Usually, whoever runs USTR serves in a cabinet-level post.

But the Treasury saga continues, and market-watchers are getting nervous.

The Treasury secretary is the face of a president’s economic policy, and the executive branch’s connection to financial markets. The person who wins the nod will take the lead on Trump’s sweeping fiscal agenda that is going to affect debt issuance, tax and trade policy, and economic statecraft. 

With Lutnick out of the way — he had been somewhat concerning to market-watchers — the key names to watch out for in the Treasury race are: Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor, Key Square Group founder Scott Bessent, Apollo CEO Marc Rowan, and Senator Bill Hagerty.

All have the Wall Street pedigree that Trump — and investors — want in a Treasury secretary. The emergence of Warsh in the mix may have driven a rally in Treasuries, according to a Deutsche Bank strategist.

Markets, and all of Washington, will have to wait at least another day or so before we’re closer to a name. And that’s only the beginning. The eventual nominee still faces of gantlet of background checks, financial disclosures, questionnaires and, eventually, a Senate confirmation hearing. — Saleha Mohsin

Trump’s second term in office will have repercussions for US policy on Russia, Ukraine and NATO. Tune in to our Live Q&A tomorrow at 9:00 am ET, where Bloomberg reporters will answer questions on what that might look like.

Trump is nominating celebrity doctor and television personality Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which would give him a central role in overseeing health-care policy.

Trump’s team is looking to slash fuel-efficiency requirements for new cars and light trucks as part of plans to unwind Biden administration policies that the president-elect blasted as an “EV mandate.”

Vice President-elect JD Vance is arranging meetings between key Republican senators and the embattled Gaetz as well as Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice to run the Defense Department.

Whether Trump orders hundreds of thousands of federal workers back to their Washington, DC, offices or purges them from their jobs, local officials are bracing for seismic impact on the local economy.

New York prosecutors told the judge in Trump’s hush money case that they will fight any attempt to dismiss the matter as a result of his reelection but are open to delaying any proceedings while he is in the White House. 

Officials in Springfield, Ohio, say they can’t predict how quickly Trump might act on his campaign promise to deport Haitian migrants, but they are already bracing for the economic impact.

The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan has privately told people he’ll step down before Trump is inaugurated in January, marking the end of his tenure aggressively prosecuting crimes across Wall Street.

Republican Representative Nancy Mace is facing criticism after filing a resolution that would prevent the first transgender member of the chamber, Sarah McBride, from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol.

Recent college grads are feeling the chill from a cooling labor market, with the gap between the unemployment rate for them and the overall rate for Americans with a college degree widening to 2.8 percentage points.

Google’s Chrome browser could fetch as much as $20 billion if a judge agrees to a Justice Department proposal to sell the business, in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

Today on Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power early edition at 1 p.m., hosts Joe Mathieu and Kailey Leinz interviewed Joseph Lavorgna, who was chief economist at the National Economic Council during Trump's first term, about the debate within the president-elect’s team as he fills top economic jobs.

On the program at 5 p.m., they talk with Former International Space Station Commander Leroy Chiao about today's scheduled test of the SpaceX Starship rocket and its booster recovery system.

On the Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s Leslie Patton talks about how mid-priced, brand name companies like Kraft and Luvs are seeing declining sales while similar products on either end of the price spectrum — cheaper generics and high-end premium goods — are up. Listen on iHeart, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The remote work boom may be over, according to an analysis of remote job opportunities by job site Indeed. The company’s economists reviewed job postings and categorized them as open to remote work if the title or description included terms like “remote work,” “telecommute,” “work from home,” “hybrid,” or similar language. Remote work remains prevalent generally, but the data suggests that job flexibility is no longer a given, and may be past its peak. Over the past year, the remote share fell in seven of the 10 sectors with the highest share of remote job postings. The accounting industry saw the biggest declines, but, jobs in software development, IT operations and banking and finance also saw large downticks in remote options. — Alex Tanzi

Initial jobless claims for last week will be reported at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

Existing home sales are reported at 10 a.m. Thursday.

The University of Michigan’s final read of consumer sentiment in November will be released Friday.

The deadline for state certification of presidential electors is Dec. 11.

The new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3.

Inauguration day is Jan. 20.

• The Texas State Board of Education is set to vote this week on a proposed elementary-school curriculum that adds teaching the Bible into reading and language lessons, the New York Times reports.
• Check fraud jumped almost 400% last year and banks are trying to stay ahead of fraudsters who use fairly low-tech means to alter stolen checks, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• Homicides in major US cities continued to decline during the first nine months of the year as law enforcement agencies responded to the pandemic surge of violence, according to Axios.

Like Washington Edition? Check out these newsletters:

• Breaking News Alerts for the biggest stories from around the world, delivered to your inbox as they happen
• FOIA Files for Jason Leopold’s weekly newsletter uncovering government documents never seen before
• Morning Briefing Americas for catching up on everything you need to know
• Balance of Power for the latest political news and analysis from around the globe

Explore all newsletters at Bloomberg.com.